This situation has gone past my being able to sit down with him and tell him this. You see, he has been doing this since I moved in with him in 1985. I have had many discussions about this with him. I have screamed at him, I have talked reasonably, I have resorted to begging him to please please please take 3 minutes out of the night and call me to let me know that he isn't dead. It would serve no purpose to discuss it again with him outside of therapy. The only thing it would accomplish is to continue a very long cycle. I would end up breaking down he would end up apologizing and in a couple of weeks or a few months it will happen again. No, I will not speak with him again about this outside therapy.

I did talk to my therapist today. She is of the opinion that my desire to self mutilate today is my acting out his anger. I have done all the appropriate steps in managing my anger. I told him I was upset and I told him what needed to be done. In fact it wasn't until the day after I told him we needed to meet with our therapist about this that I started feeling like I needed to self injure. If the need to self injure was connected with my actually speaking my needs (which has happened in the past) I would have had the need yesterday morning. It wasn't until I had personal contact with him for an extended period of time (over dinner and a walk through the park) that the need started building. I am quite empathetic. I tend to pick up and contain other people's emotions. I am learning to seperate their emotions from mine. Sometimes I can do it on my own but often times I need my therapist to help me sort through it. That was the case this time. As we talked through what happened I realized that my anger didn't match up with the craziness in my head because I had indeed gone through the steps that I need to take to manage my anger. The emotion was coming from outside myself. Since talking to her I have only had mild lingering self injury cravings and short spurts of circular thinking. Right now I am fine.

My husband and I will be going to therapy on Thursday. My therapist told me that it would be a good idea to mention his repressed anger so he would have a chance to think about it before meeting with her. I know he carries a lot of anger about our sex life. We haven't had sex in months. In that past it was me who avoided sesx. I have brought it up in therapy and we were given assignments to increase intimacy but he has been the one to derail them. I have tried hard to work through it but he continues to try to keep the statis quo. My therapist says that the focus has been on me for the last 5 years, now it is going to have to be turned on him so he can work through his anger before we can move forward in our relationship work. It is weird to not be the one who is acting out.

Oh, she stated that if I chose to injure myself today, I would be acting out his anger which would enable him to continue to not experience it for himself. I would re-establish my place as the "sick one" which would be a good thing for him on an unconcious level because then he could focus on my problems and wouldn't have to look at his own inadequacies. She asked me if I wanted to continue having that job description. I told her H*** no. I have been working far to long and far to hard to continue with the same old programs.

Now I have to just hold onto this reality for a week and not let his emotions control my life. I am a bit scared because this is the point in which he has to decide to stay the same or to change. I can't stay the same because I have already changed. If he decides to stay then... Well that is for later. I don't need to worry about that right at this moment.
Thanks everyone for listen to me ramble.
Carrie

PS Reading back over this I realized that I speak a lot about self injury and I fear that you will think this post belongs in the self injury section. But in this case I hope that you will see that I am trying to focus on the symptoms of my BPD and that self injury is just an outward manifestation of the illness. For me it is a clear indicator that something has gone awry. Thanks for your patience.
CK